IRANIAN OSCAR WINNER: ABOVE POLITICS?

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, which won the best foreign language Oscar Sunday night, has become a huge hit in Israel, a country that regards Iran as its most dangerous enemy, the Associated Press reported on Sunday. The wire service quoted Yair Raveh, film critic for Israel’s Pnai Plus entertainment magazine, as saying, “It’s very well acted, exceptionally well written and very moving. … Ultimately you don’t think about nuclear bombs or dictators threatening world peace. You see them driving cars and going to movies and they look exactly like us.” But state media in Iran, noting that another contender for the foreign-language Oscar was Israel’s entry, Footnote, said that the victory left behind a film from “the Zionist regime.” But, in accepting the award, Farhadi commented that Iranians are likely to be “happy not just because of an important award or a film or a filmmaker, but because at the time when talk of war, intimidation and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country, Iran, is spoken here through her glorious culture.”